Delphine
by Ruby Casablanca
Summary: No one ever really talked about the Holmes girl. But Sherlock never really forgot.


A/N: And every fic I start that seems that it would be less than a thousand words always ends up 3000+. I have a problem! But anyway, more angst for ya cuz I am the angst queen and do little else. AU because I have yet to see Delphine show up anywhere in Sherlock. Please enjoy this story! Reviews/messages/PMs etc...are all wonderful :)

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Delphine

No one ever really talked about the Holmes girl.

It wasn't because she was strange or malformed or disabled. It wasn't because she was odd in any way. In fact it was because of quite the opposite.

In a family of geniuses and recluses, of the damaged and demented, she was the only normal one. And normal was a term cast loosely. She still had her quirks, her little tid bits and character flaws, but she wasn't anything _special._

And that was reason enough for her to be outcast from birth.

She was plain, a middle child through and through, shrouded by the shadow of her perfect older brother and demeaned in value by her time-consuming, overly-dramatic younger brother. Despite being gangly and tall, she didn't even look like them; the fact that she had pale ginger hair compared to the dark tresses of her brothers made her father wary of her true parentage for years. Mycroft, in his younger and more irritable days, would always taunt her about the fact that she almost made mother and father divorce, that her real father was a con, a pirate, or some other such nonsense. She was never really sure whether or not to believe him.

Her intelligence, though great, palled in comparison to her siblings, they who could deduce and think like no others could. They were lauded for their abilities, and while she would make perfect marks, no one would even bat an eyelash towards her. Sherlock could be the biggest arse at age seven and still gain all the praise for solving the mystery of which maid had tried to steal mother's strand of pearls.

She was severely devoid of any form of love in her childhood.

Even the fact that she was a girl meant nothing special to her own mother. She was an old fashioned woman with old-fashioned points of view. To her, her sons were her world – spoiled princes who got whatever their hearts desired - but her daughter was meant to be seen and not heard. So very, very British even though she was French herself. Her mother cared less about what she was doing or where she went so long as she was 'proper'. She even shipped her off to boarding school in Paris after she turned ten so that she could be 'properly civilized'.

She didn't even exist to her father. If it didn't involve work, politics, or alcohol, he was never interested. At least she could say that he treated all of his children equally in that respect.

She could also say that she and Mycroft had a decent relationship. She was closer in age to him than Sherlock, much more mature, and not as volatile. She withstood his jabs and short comments, did as he asked and assisted him when needed. They were more of acquaintances than anything else, someone to use when useful and to be discarded after.

Sherlock, on the other hand, loved her...to an extent. He looked up to her, came to her when he was hurt, let her help him with his homework until he surpassed even her ability to compute data into fact. They were closer than anyone, and for a while he was all she needed.

And then all hell broke loose.

Her mother, trapped in the past, wanted her to wed the son of a lord with whom they just happened to have connections. She'd met them a grand total of two times, and that was enough for her to know that they weren't worth the bother of remembering. The family didn't need the money – the Holmes family was one of the most affluent in all of Britain – her mother just wanted her to have a title and a life far far away from her. Because 'that's what young women did' after all: They get married to rich men. That's what she did, and that's what her daughter would do.

But she wasn't having any of that. That was the final straw. She could deal with absentee parents and boarding schools and backhanded comments, but a marriage to a dreadful stranger was what finally broke her steely resolve. Stuck in a marriage as chaotic as her parents' for the rest of her miserable existence made her want to jump off a bridge and into the Thames.

And for the first time she let every one of them know it.

Oh, the fights lasted for weeks. Mycroft wasn't around to stand up for her, as if he would in the first place. Sherlock locked himself in his room, refusing to acknowledge the problem per usual. Her father cursed and her mother pulled her about the sitting room as she screamed.

One stray slap to the face had Delphine Beatrice Holmes packing her duffle bag and purchasing a one-way ticket to America for later that night.

It was needless to say that she was disowned, cut off, removed from any and all family trees.

She wasn't welcome back there. She didn't want to be. She never wanted to see any of them ever again.

No one wrote to her, asking her where she went or how she was. Part of her was hurt that even the elderly members who had 'loved her so dearly' (mind in their own way) hadn't even bothered to check in. But they always were a vicious, crotchety bunch.

It hurt more that Sherlock, the one person she honest-to-God cared about, didn't call. Didn't write. Not even a text. She knew that he had heard her leave, that he had somehow known exactly what was going on that night. But he obviously didn't care, and that stung.

So, fuck them all, she started over. From the ground up she worked like a slave to pay her way through university, now called college because she was in America. She was neck deep and debt, balancing night classes with three jobs, barely sleeping a wink, but she had never felt so free. For the first time, she felt alive, like she had complete control over her own life.

And time moved on. She graduated with a Ph.D. in Biochemistry. She met a man, a great man, and was married by the next summer. She had love, a steady job, friends, children, and a life outside of her miserable past.

She hadn't told her husband much about that part of her life, only enough to know that she wasn't close to any of her family at all and she had no interest to be. She didn't even know if they were dead or alive. And for nearly twenty years, she was honest-to-God happier that way.

Until the summons came.

She was baffled when the postman personally handed her a letter. Just by the look of the thick, creamy paper she knew who it was from. Who else was pompous enough to just throw expensive paper away like that?

But as soon as she opened it, her perfectly balanced world crashed in around her.

She collapsed into a chair, her hands on her head, not completely sure she was still breathing.

Because her first contact in years was to tell her that her baby brother was dead. And she was just invited to his funeral.

Her husband found her in the same chair hours later looking just as she did the moment she broke the seal of that damned envelope. He read the note, consoled her as best as he could given the circumstances, and waited for the storm to pass. He knew how quickly her dark moods could swing.

Except that it didn't swing back this time.

Which was how, despite nearly two decades of silence - years of forgetting, of carefully shoving her past neatly into a box in the back of her mind, recreating her identity and running far, far away from her old life in England - she found herself back there, standing over her little brother's grave.

Of course, she wasn't standing right over it. No, she stood near the back, the remnants of her family and a man named John Watson taking the front-most spots amongst the flocks of people that decided to make it out to the funeral. Apparently Sherlock had gained some sense of fame during her years abroad, and from what she had gathered in her mere moments back in her home country was that his death was his fall from grace, a suicide to counteract the supposed blasphemy he had committed. A fraud they'd called him. Now, she may have been estranged from her brother for the majority of his life, but if he was one thing, she knew that it was not a fraud.

She could barely hear the ceremony. She couldn't even force herself to look at John's face, so twisted with pain as he read out Sherlock's eulogy. He looked so distressed, so terribly broken. For a second she was jealous that this man had a relationship with her brother that she could only dream of.

And sooner than she thought, the masses parted, the crowd thinned away, and she with her black umbrella though it was not raining, went to retreat into the shadows before anyone she knew caught sight of her.

But of course it would not be that simple.

"I had hoped that you would get my invitation."

A cold voice sent shivers down her spine. She would know that commanding, condescending tone anywhere. She didn't have to turn around to know who was behind her.

"Mycroft," she spun on her heels slowly, facing her elder brother for the first time since her childhood. Oh, how he had aged! The lines on his face, the weariness in his sharp eyes. It made her sad despite her best efforts to remain detached. "Thank you for…letting me know."

"Yes, well, he was, after all, your brother too," he dug at her, letting her have the front of his misplaced venom. But he didn't scare her; his tactics were wasted on this ghost, and somehow, deep down, he knew that. Sighing, he continued, "He missed you terribly those first few years - inconsolable. Didn't eat or sleep; he was devastated. Even into adulthood he was never quite…the same."

"Well, we never really were a normal bunch to begin with," she replied coolly, keeping her emotions cleanly in check even though she knew that Mycroft was testing her will, just like he used to all those years ago. Nothing changes.

And there were so many unspoken words in that sentence, the fire that burned beneath them too great to just be put out with anecdotes and an apology. Besides, she could not apologize, for she was not sorry for leaving. But she was sorry that she missed out on their lives.

"You do know that while I chose to leave it was never my decision to stay away. I loved you both dearly, but I couldn't stay here. I thought that we could still stay in touch…obviously I was wrong."

"I know…" Mycroft drew, long and weary, as if he was finally recognizing some painful truth. "Life is far too short to be wasted on ignoring sentiment. I pushed the people I cared about too far away, and now I have lost a brother. I do not wish to lose a sister again."

"I did not wish to lose my family at all, yet here we are, strangers."

Mycroft managed a thin smile, and for a moment she could've sworn she saw the hint of tears glistening in his eyes, but they were soon batted away. No, Mycroft Holmes was much too dignified for emotion, and he was already far too compromised as it was.

"You were always the best of us you know. I think even he agreed with me on that."

She didn't answer. Didn't even smile. It wasn't a happy thought. She never thought of herself as the best, and the fact that both of her brothers would think of her like that after all this time was too much for her to handle.

"Farewell, little sister," Mycroft nodded his head and passed, leaning on his umbrella like a cane as he sauntered into his black car and rolled away. No warning nor reason, and he just left. But she had a feeling that their time was always meant to be short, and Mycroft Holmes was a busy man. Always one for mystery, and she found herself laughing at the irony of how people could be so different yet so much the same.

"Uh, hello…"

John Watson was the last person she expected to stop and chat with, yet there he was, giving her a fright. But she didn't shout or voice her surprise. She simply smiled at the man so obviously befuddled. He looked at her like she was out of place...like he couldn't decide where to place her amongst everyone else.

"Hello," she smiled, a failed attempt to be pleasant as that only made John frown deeply.

"Did Mycroft send you to look after me?" John asked rather snappishly, like he was expecting something that outlandish, and for the first time she questioned the extent of her brother's meddling. "Look, you seem like a nice woman, but I don't need a babysitter, so you can tell Mycroft to shove whatever he's got planned and-"

"John, I promise you I am not here to spy on you or lock you up," she swore, trying to calm the shaking man before her. He looked absolutely distressed, ready to throw a punch or jump out into oncoming traffic at a moment's notice, and it terrified her.

"You were at the service. I saw you," he continued icily, though he was less defensive this go round. "Did he invite you?"

"I suppose. I wasn't really expecting an invitation."

"Who are you then? I mean you're obviously not from around here, so why are you here? Did you know Sherlock?"

"Yes, yes I did,"

_Did._ She used the past tense.

And then her voice broke, and for the first time she really allowed herself to feel, because this man was so lost and grasping at straws just trying to keep himself together, to remain strong, and there she was, completely calm at the face of her brother's death. _And it wasn't supposed to be that way_. Perhaps she really wasn't that important after all, but this man, this John Watson, he was important. And he was falling to pieces before her eyes.

So she let her single tear fall, enough to let John know she wasn't there because she was just a fan or some low-end reporter. He'd had enough bullshit to last a lifetime.

"I suppose he didn't talk about me then, if at all? I wouldn't be surprised. I left when he was just a boy, just starting to get taller than me. God, I missed so much!"

"Who are you?" John asked again, but this time there was an intense curiosity in his words. When she looked in his eyes, his wrath had vanished. His mask had fallen, and so had hers, the hurt in the space between them so raw that she could feel it - thick and ice cold.

"Delphine Solomon, but my maiden name was Holmes. Delphine Holmes," the name rolled oddly off of her tongue, so strange and foreign sounding. Oh, how long it had been since she had used that name. "I am…I _was_ Sherlock's sister."

John was speechless. His jaw dropped.

"Yeah, like I'm going to believe that," he sighed, leaning away from her like he'd been struck.

He didn't believe her, but she wasn't surprised. She was a stranger after all.

"I wouldn't blame you if you didn't."

"No…it's not even possible! You-you don't even…"

"I know, I don't look like a Holmes. I don't even act like one. I'm too _normal_."

She expected it, and John swallowed, now trying to pick out the Sherlock in her, she was sure. She could see his mind working over-time analyzing any and everything he could pick up about her, every tiny detail, obviously trained by the man now lying in the earth below.

"In a family of geniuses and madmen, normality is not a prized quality," she explained simply, and in that moment so much about Sherlock made sense to John.

"You were outcasted because you were normal?"

"I _left_ because I wanted normal. And then was promptly deleted from all family records. I don't even exist to them. If Mycroft hadn't sent the summons, I never would've known. I live in America now, so it's not like I hear about these things…" she let her mind haze for a moment to the tombstone, "It's been twenty years and it still hurts. I've spent twenty years away, and it's killing me. He's gone…my baby brother…"

She turned her head away, and quickly laughed through the awkwardness. John was looking at her strangely, almost pityingly, and she hated that look. "But of course I have no room to talk. I'm practically a stranger. What about you Doctor Watson? How fairs your heart?"

She turned the tables on him, desperate to avoid her own emotions. He, however, wasn't much better.

"I don't know if I have one anymore…" he replied honestly, and it looked like the admission shocked him, as if he were guilty for admitting the truth.

"Time heals all things. And from what I read, your time with my brother healed him as well. You made him…human again," she found herself grinning at that. Sherlock, a human. That odd child, an actual functioning member of society. It all seemed too fairytale. "Tell me, was he happy?"

"For I time I thought he was…but happy men just…they don't…" John couldn't continue, clenching his fists so tightly that his knuckles turned white as snow. "But I guess I was wrong."

"My brother, from birth, was always a complex creature. He felt so much all at once…and he always tried to suppress it as a child. Made him sad, so sad and angry. No one could help him when he decided to go into one of his dark spells. But you could. You were the only one."

"But it wasn't enough. In the end he still…he's still…

"Not enough? It was more than anyone had ever done for him before. You took a lonely man and gave him a reason to be better. That in itself is a miracle all on its own. You saved him, even if only for a little bit."

John didn't respond, so Delphine decided to switch topics slightly. There was far too much heaviness around them, and she was quite past her limit.

"John, do you want to hear a story?"

He only looked up, and when no protest came, she started. She let her mind wander to a place it hadn't been in ages. She dusted off the cobwebs and opened the windows to her memories, and there they were, untouched, just where she had left them all those years ago.

"When I was younger, I was tasked with being Sherlock's babysitter, and I _hated_ it. He was always running about, messing with things. Gave the cooks a right time! And he never did his homework, always claiming he'd forgotten. So, in order to help him remember, I made up a game. We would pretend that our minds were giant cubbies, and we would go into our minds and pull things out of them and whoever could pull out the most got a prize. Of course, I always let him win. I'm sure you'd seen him when he lost at something. What a poor sport!...

"But anyway, it was supposed to help him remember his schoolwork, and eventually he grew to love his so much that he started to use if for everything. He, being the pompous clod he was, began calling his a castle because it was 'so much bigger than everyone else's'."

She looked up from the ground where she had fixed her gaze to find John absolutely astounded, his own eyes widened as if she had just dropped some sort of huge secret on him.

"You…you created Sherlock's mind palace?"

There was something of awe in his words, but she was too caught up in the actual title he had given the place to pay much attention.

"A mind palace? He called it a mind palace, dear lord!"

John laughed as best he could, almost like he didn't want to. "Yeah, that's what I thought too…"

"He told me a few weeks before I left that he'd always save me a floor in the castle, that I was too important to just have a room," she reminisced, her eyes misting over as she remembered Sherlock's pensive face as he took her in that day, like he wouldn't get the chance to see her in a while. He was making note of every detail, something she didn't realize at the time. Now it just hurt. "I think he knew I was leaving before I did. The way he told me…like he was saying goodbye…"

And tears leaked from the corners of her eyes so quickly that it was pointless to wipe them away. She could no longer contain herself, her boarding school manners long since discarded.

"He was a good kid John. No matter what anyone says. He was a good kid…the best kid..."

And John took Delphine into his arms and let her sob years' worth of unshed tears into his shoulder. Finally, the dam had broken. After all this time, she was allowed to feel.

She didn't even care that she was calling Sherlock a kid, that she was locked in the past, never getting a future. She was robbed of that chance, and only now did she understand what she had lost. And she had no one to blame but herself.

"The best man," John agreed, his own voice wavering.

And they stood there in silence together for a long while, just staring at the headstone, not really caring about the time.

And they were both completely oblivious to the silhouetted man standing under the shadows of the willow trees, tracks of tears slowly streaming down his cheeks, broken by the one person he never expected to see again.

No one ever really talked about the Holmes girl, the plain middle child with the normal life.

But Sherlock never really forgot.


End file.
